


When I'm alone I exist

by salem_student



Series: Dissect my Insecurities [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Depression, Going against Medical Advice, I'll add tags as they come up, M/M, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, but expect slightly further down the line for there to be some, eating issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28012095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salem_student/pseuds/salem_student
Summary: The Hunger disappeared without warning, and Quentin couldn’t deny that he was relieved at the sudden absence. Yes, it should have triggered at least half a thought about how his episodes with depression often start with absence of hunger and then progress into absence of will to live. But honestly? He was just happy to be able to focus on his life without something clawing at the back of his mind demanding he run away and eat everything he can find. So he lets it slide for a bit, he’s rewarded at first — Julia’s delighted in his new found tolerance for salads, and Eliot — for all his protests that he didn’t mind the weight gain — must like him more now he’s lost it.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: Dissect my Insecurities [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051727
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	When I'm alone I exist

**Author's Note:**

> This is in keeping with Dissect my Insecurities, but this one has more angst. Be super careful guys this involves a lot of self hate, going against medical advice and discussion of accidental and deliberate weight loss. If it's not your cup of tea no worries (but if you fancy seeing the boys being cute and accepting their changing appearances then go read What do you do when the gold is gone? on my ao3. Zero angst in that one, just soft smut)

The Hunger disappeared without warning, and Quentin couldn’t deny that he was relieved at the sudden absence. Yes, it should have triggered at least half a thought about how his episodes with depression often start with absence of hunger and then progress into absence of will to live. But honestly? He was just happy to be able to focus on his life without something clawing at the back of his mind demanding he run away and eat everything he can find. So he lets it slide for a bit, he’s rewarded at first — Julia’s delighted in his new found tolerance for salads, and Eliot — for all his protests that he didn’t mind the weight gain — must like him more now he’s lost it. Todd even commented that he ‘looked more like his old self’ which had earned him a glass thrown at his head and Eliot a long discussion with Fogg over whether ex-students, and current part time tutors, were technically allowed to get drunk and throw things at students in the cottage. Eliot had won that one with the damning dual argument of 1. Mayacovski; and 2. All the trauma.

  
Quentin doesn’t even really notice when hunger disappears too. Regular hunger, the type that stings of acid not anger. Maybe secretly he’s a little relieved that it’s gone. It’s not like he’s depressed again. He’s not depressed again. He’s fine, he’s doing fucking great actually. He’s teaching, because no-one gives a fuck whether you have a degree if you kind of saved the world a whole bunch of times. He’s got Eliot, and Julia, and even Alice — he hadn’t been kidding when he said they worked better together, just not like that — Margo and Josh on a part time basis. Quentin thinks that these are the ingredients for happiness, if he cared to dig out one of his early therapy workbooks he’s pretty sure he’d have written that in ‘attainable goals for long term recovery’ or some other stupid page. A good support network and a stable income, a place to live. No — or at least very few — life or death situations. (There’s only so safe you can be as a magician, but at least now the danger he tends to be in is more of the hi-jinx kind rather than the horror kind of the past. Last week, there was a man-eating-plant on the loose on campus. But gloriously it 1. wasn’t his fucking problem; and 2. wasn’t about to destroy the world.

  
So he stops taking his meds. If you have the ingredients for happiness why mess about with the pre-mix stuff?

  
No-one notices. Quentin doesn’t want anyone to worry, can’t handle another talk about how he’s disabled, chronically ill, permanently irreversibly fucked up and it’s totally fine that he needs a chemical crutch to not jump off a building. They don’t get it, he knows that they try, but for as much as his friends understand pain this is different. Julia has never been hopeless, she’s suffered far worse than he has, but her brain doesn’t do the give up and die thing. She gets through, sure maybe in a manic way that’s not the healthiest, but she gets through. Eliot too, when his brain breaks it’s like a stained glass window shattering in slow motion, for a moment mistakable as the light reflected by a disco-ball. Quentin’s brain breaks like a dimmer switch. Maybe they’d benefit from antidepressants, everyone definitely could do with therapy. But they don’t take them. Don’t even think about maybe seeking them out. Instead it’s a universally accepted truth that Q’s brain is broken and it’s imperative that he takes his fucking pills. It’s patronising.

  
So Quentin makes sure nobody notices, it’s almost funny really. He remembers judging people in the hospital who’d cheek their pills, yell about how they numbed them out, shut out reality, changed the world for the worse. Whenever Quentin had ended up in hospital the pills had always been the easiest part. Hell as soon as they’d started working he’d pretty much immediately demand they let him out. It’s just a chemical imbalance that sometimes requires he be kept in an empty room with nothing that could be used to hurt himself with. Once the pills sort out the imbalance he should be free to go. Something’s different now. He knows that he does have a chemical imbalance. Knows that clinically he has depression, that the reason he was feeling better is because he was taking the pills, but something in him doesn’t want that to be true. He’s not saving the pills up for suicide and he doesn’t think that they somehow make him less him. Maybe he just wants his problems to be like everybody else’s for once. Non-pathological, just a weird personality quirk. Like hi this is Julia she can be obsessive, meet Eliot he’s an on again off again alcoholic, and this Q every so often he wants to die, but it’s okay we love them all just as they are.

  
He makes a show of taking the pills with him to the bathroom every day, makes up some shit about how he likes to take them immediately after brushing his teeth — ‘no really El, I’d never skip my teeth so if I link the pills to that then I’ll never forget to take it’. Then every day he goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth and takes one 100mg and one 50mg from their little orange containers and puts them into a little mint tin he keeps hidden at the bottom of his wash bag. As he collects more and more pills he starts to find this strange fascination with counting them out. 1,500mg, then 3,000mg, then 4,500mg. He’s not going to take it, doesn’t even want to die right now. He should flush them. But there’s something nice about seeing the evidence. Here lies the chemical that Quentin Coldwater doesn’t fucking need anymore.


End file.
